Patent Assertion Entity Activity

categories were Other Electrical & Electronic, Communications, and Computer Hardware and Software.
Business method patents, a sub-category of the Computers & Communications category, did not account
for a substantial proportion of the study patent sample compared to the general population.
The preceding analysis describes the patents held by Study PAEs and Holding Entities, which consisted
of both patents that were identified as forming the basis of a demand or litigation and those that were
not. Portfolio PAEs in particular tended to assert via demand or litigation only a relatively small fraction
of the patents in their portfolios, while ultimately licensing all of the patents they held. The FTC was
interested in learning whether litigated patents came from different technology categories relative to
total holdings, in part because litigated patents were an important source of revenue for Study PAEs. 316
To determine whether this was the case, the FTC evaluated the technology categories corresponding to
patents that Study PAEs asserted in litigation.
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The FTC also was interested in whether patents forming the basis of demands were in different technology categories
relative to total holdings, but could not conduct this analysis since patents were frequently not specified in the initial demand.
Therefore, the patents that were specified in demands likely did not represent an unbiased sample of patent technology
categories of all patents asserted through demands.
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